She could still see the town below as if through a pea soup fog, street lights shining incongruous against the blue sky. It was near midnight when she had walked out of the glare of those lights into the darkness of the hills. She hadn’t expected the night to be so dense, nor for it to explode into sunlight within a single step.
Nothing made sense. The asphalt-paved county road she had chosen for her escape was now nothing but deep ruts in a sea of green. No trace remained of the farms and homes that had skirted the town; only bare, rolling hills marked the horizon instead.
She had shaken her head wildly and hefted her suitcase. It was a hallucination. Or a dream. Or… she had marched onward, ignoring the evidence of her senses. In a minute she would be alright. In a minute everything would be normal. When sweat had trickled down the back of her neck she had turned back to see the town bathed in white shadow, and knew.
She had been so desperate to get away, to disappear. Walking was a long shot, but it was the only chance she had to escape his omniscient fingers that probed every corner of the world. Her suitcase dropped from nerveless hands and she collapsed to her knees beside it in the red ruts. She would wait here. If he didn’t walk up that wagon trail by nightfall, she could breathe. A different time? A parallel universe? It didn’t matter. He would never find her again.
The Word Worker 